The disappearance of the bison from the eastern United States was due to its consumption as food.  It was very gradual, like the march of civilization, and, under the circumstances, absolutely inevitable.  In a country so thickly peopled as this region speedily became, the mastodon could have survived extinction about as easily as the bison.  Except when the latter became the victim of wholesale slaughter, there was little reason to bemoan his fate, save upon grounds that may be regarded purely sentimental.  He served a most excellent purpose in the development of the country.  Even as late as 1875 the farmers of eastern Kansas were in the habit of making trips every fall into the western part of that State for wagon loads of buffalo meat as a supply for the succeeding winter.  The farmers of Texas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Minnesota also drew largely upon the buffalo as long as the supply lasted.

The extirpation of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains was due to legitimate hunting for food and clothing rather than for marketable peltries.  In no part of that whole region was the species ever numerous, although in the mountains themselves, notably in Colorado, within easy reach of the great prairies on the east, vast numbers were seen by the early explorers and pioneers.  But to the westward, away from the mountains, they were very rarely met with, and their total destruction in that region was a matter of easy accomplishment.  According to Prof.  J. A. Allen the complete disappearance of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains took place between 1838 and 1840.

B. THE PERIOD OF SYSTEMATIC SLAUGHTER, FROM 1830 TO 1838.

We come now to a history which I would gladly leave unwritten.  Its record is a disgrace to the American people in general, and the Territorial, State, and General Government in particular.  It will cause succeeding generations to regard us as being possessed of the leading characteristics of the savage and the beast of prey—­cruelty and greed.  We will be likened to the blood-thirsty tiger of the Indian jungle, who slaughters a dozen bullocks at once when he knows he can eat only one.

In one respect, at least, the white men who engaged in the systematic slaughter of the bison were savages just as much as the Piegan Indians, who would drive a whole herd over a precipice to secure a week’s rations of meat for a single village.  The men who killed buffaloes for their tongues and those who shot them from the railway trains for sport were murderers.  In no way does civilized man so quickly revert to his former state as when he is alone with the beasts of the field.  Give him a gun and something which he may kill without getting himself in trouble, and, presto! he is instantly a savage again, finding exquisite delight in bloodshed, slaughter, and death, if not for gain, then solely for the joy and happiness of it.  There is no kind of warfare against game animals too unfair, too disreputable, or too mean for